Not sure if I am the conventional windows user here, but for me, I use windows search as more of an “application launcher”: to find the application by name and start it. As a sane human, I have limited windows indexing to only start menu items (at %SystemDrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu) and Outlook items. However, it does not function quite well especially after (un)installations, which is rather annoying. Rebuilding the index “might” help, but most cases it does not.

After wasting time attempting impossible fixes, I gave up and just pins whatever I use frequently to start, which is not the ideal as now I need to use mouse for that.

Through a colleague of mine, I have learnt about PowerToys. While playing around with it, I saw the PowerToys Run which can also be used to as application launcher in addition to switching existing programmes. Moreover, another important aspect is that it has a proper dark theme, unlike the half-ass work by the Windows 10 OS team.

Sometimes I am really confused, what is seriously wrong with Microsoft?! They can have nice side products like visual studio code, powerToys, and yet their main thing the Windows 10 still can’t even have a consistent dark theme (task manager, windows search etc), still having issue with 260 char in file name, annoying issue with office suites (most likely with COM-server) that cannot open 2 files of the same name despite different full path.